Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants

by Douglas W. Tallamy

So far I have focused on one detriment associated with the overuse of alien ornamentals in suburban gardens: the cost to wildlife as native food sources disappear. In my view, this is reason enough to increase the percentage of natives in our gardens. But there is another serious cost that arises when we garden with aliens that we can no longer ethically ignore. When gardeners support the market for plants from other countries, they encourage the introduction of alien stock to North America, with two serious consequences. First, despite our best efforts to bring only “clean” plants into this country, we continually introduce harmful diseases and insects that evolved on other continents along with our beloved alien ornamentals. The problems stemming from the introduction of an unwanted disease or insect pest are obvious. Less obvious (in fact, downright controversial) is the suggestion that gardening with alien ornamentals places our native ecosystems at risk of destruction by yet another invasive plant species.